my comments as usual are interlinear
On 9/12/2011 3:56 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:
On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Poor
Richard
<poor_richard@att.net>
wrote:
My comments are
interlinear
But what makes the term "spirituality" even more problematic
than "love" in many contexts is that it is indeed a "hot button" word
for many in the atheist/agnostic/skeptic/free-thought/science community.
yes, but that is exactly because they have chosen for an impoverished
understanding of the world, and thus the world challenges that ...
I do not believe such a description fits me nor a substantial portion
of the communities in question.
for me it's very easy to recognize the people who have
either
gone through this inner transformation, or not,
I somewhat agree, but for me it may not be as easy as for you. I am
often surprised by what extended dialog may unearth.
and the acceptance of the word 'spirituality' seems like a
good
indicator for that.
To me the word spirituality, when used in a non-sectarian universalist
or new-age sort of way, is lately an indicator of a sort of
intermediate phase of development, although few that I encounter
actually seem to pass beyond it. That may sound superior or arrogant
but I think it best that I don't sugar coat it with euphamisms or sneak
it in sideways. I base this on my own life trajectory as well as my
last few years of study and re-analysis of myself and those I have
known.
You are one of the few exceptions, i.e. having clearly
having
experiences but not using the concept.
Yes I will stack up the quantity and intensity of my religious,
mystical, and shamanistic experiences (with and without psychoactive
substances) against anybody's. I'm no slouch as an amateur scholar of
comparative religion and other wisdom traditions, either. I used the
concept of spirituality most of my life. It has only been in the past
decade that I have abandoned the concept of supernaturality and only in
the past few years have I questioned the implicit associations of
supernaturality (and other connotations I consider doubtful or
fallacious) with the word "spirituality". It may be telling that I
titled my blog post, "Is spiritual the new supernatural?," with a
question rather than a statement. I am still agnostic as to the
existence of anything logically and qualitatively distinct from
everything else in the natural world, i.e. anything supernatural or
non-natural) but I have completely abandoned the idea in my own thought
pending some startling future revelation). One might think my
aforementioned
experiences would have provided just that revelation and indeed I
interpreted them that way once. But gradually over the past couple of
decades, concurrent with my deepening practice of introspection and my
further assimilation of neuroscience and other life sciences I have
come to interpret them in naturalistic ways that are much more
satisfying to me than my former spiritual interpretations. My
naturalistic interpretations are more satisfying because they are more
intellectually parsimonious (spirituality no longer "adds value" to my
interpretations--if it did I would retain it); because they expand
rather than shrink the horizons of my mind; and because they fractally
interdigitate with all the rest of my knowledge as my previous
interpretations never could. The silver lining of spending years in
extreme depression during which as much as half my time was spent in a
semi-trance-like, semi-meditative state interspersed with long periods
of careful and lucid examination of my thoughts, my beliefs, and my
entire body of knowledge and experience-- was that I was able to sort,
cross-index, and integrate all that content and process it to an extent
I think that few people ever experience. This has given me an
intellectual rebirth. I would say that my new brain is about two years
old.
But from the above, your choice seems politically and
socially
motivated by the acceptance of that said community.
Not at all. I neither accept nor am I accepted by those communities (I
mentioned several) to any extent that would influence me. My brief
interaction with people in the local atheist community in N. Alabama
was quite contentious. My acceptance of science is not of the community
but of the methods, philosophies (with exceptions), and discoveries of
science. I merely mentioned the various communities in question because
they are well-represented in internet fora. I run across them all the
time, but usually in open discussions of activism, politics, economics,
ethics, conservation, general philosophy, and life sciences. I get the
impression they are well-represented in the ranks of public
intellectuals, internet geeks, and social activists. Very few of them
seem to specialize in hyping their atheism, skepticism, etc. to the
exclusion of the general spectrum of issues and ideas, any more than
most gender-atypical or neuro-atypical people or handi-capable people
are obsessed with talking just about their special community ad nauseum.
I understand that position perfectly, for the same reason
I do
not use the loaded s- and c-words .. but rather p2p to start a fresh
investigation of emancipatory possibilities
If I slant my language for any audience (which is seldom), it is
usually the "mainstream" audience. But if I were in your position I
would probably avoid loaded words, too. From that frame of reference I
might be fairly neutral on spirituality, since it is so popular, but I
think I would avoid constructing many articles (with occasional
exceptions, of course) that didn't allow some room or comfort level for
bright, non-spiritual and anti-spiritual people to feel safe about
participating.
We can say that "all is part of
life", but
again, isn't
there a sea of difference between understanding this mentally, i.e.
still separately as a watching and conversing mind, and/or to
experience this directly, as a shaman might.
I behold a sunset. I am moved esthetically and emotionally, and perhaps
in other ways for which "naturalistic spirituality" might serve as a
place holder for other words we don't have for responses of our
organism that are still insufficiently examined. I'm not even saying
that we can't value the sunset without examining our experience at all.
But if someone tells me the sunset moves them spiritually, I probably
know less than if they say it moves them esthetically or emotionally.
Most people would just accept the spiritual explanation as if that
meant the same thing to everyone. If you said you love the sunset,
depending on the context I might say "yeah, me too" or I might ask
"why?", or "what do you love about it?," or "what do you mean?, or "why
don't you marry it?"
The sunset is not a good example, as anyone can 'easily' experience
that, but what about shamanistic, mystical, gnostic and other
experiences, that are not reducable to an external input from nature,
but are rather inner events, from problematic origins (your 3 mind
theory) . THere is more to life than nature 'mysticism' ..
I want to say a bit about eroticism and then I'll discuss shamanism. A
lot of artful lovers (I include myself of earlier years) have had
so-called spiritual erotic experiences--merging with the cosmos kind of
stuff. The thing is, all kinds of hormones get flowing in the nervous
system that are capable of producing hallucinations and there is ample
evidence of the interaction of bio-elctromagnetic fields that probably
affect the proprioceptive nervous system in exotic ways. I myself
became fairly adept at the latter, and for years I considered various
spiritual interpretations. Gradually I worked out naturalistic
hypotheses that were more plausible to me. This does not exhaust the
possibilities for evoking spiritual-like erotic experiences but I think
it probably characterizes the whole spectrum of the phenomena.
I'm not sure how you might distinguish mystical and gnostic, but one of
the few experiences I have no good naturalistic hypothesis for is my
occasional ability to correctly visualize the interior construction of
a machine I have never worked with before. One example is the case of a
WWII vintage Willys Jeep that wouldn't start in the middle of the
wilderness. Although I was not likely to have ever seen a schematic of
a Willys starter, much less ever disassembled one, I had a vision of
the construction of the starter which actually included the problem. I
disassembled the starter and found the problem exactly as I had seen
it. Its possible that I had disassembled maybe one other starter,
possibly that of a 1949 Jaguar, before. So go figure. I've had similar
experiences with other machines. Leaky mind?
What shall I say about shamanism without fearing for my life? Here
again I think the proprioceptive nervous system and the
bio-electromagnetic fields of living organisms are recruited in exotic
ways, often with the aid of psychoactive substances, music, chants,
rhythmic movements, sleep deprivation, and many other devices that
alter or reconfigure the neural networks and the electrochemical state
of the brain and the entire nervous system of the practitioner and
sometimes other participants. Even though a lot of real stuff,
including very exotic biophysical and biochemical stuff, is actually
going on, the other dimension of it is that memory contents (not just
the conscious memory but the eidetic lifetime memory of every sense
perception you ever had and every
Hieronymus
Bosch-esque image you ever
imagined or dreamed in your life) are recruited to wrap the real
physiological phenomena in a "virtual reality", or a sort of channeled
hallucination that relates in a meaningful way to the shamanistic
activity being conducted. The deal is that stuff happens that seems
like magic, but is actually very natural despite its being truly
unusual, mind-boggling, and poorly understood by science. That is not
to say that all practices considered as shamanism, such as so-called
psychic surgery, are legitimate. But there truly is real shamanic
"magic", healing, and communication with nature in the manner I
characterized above. I am fairly convinced I have communicated with
plants and animals shamanistically, but a large part of what I thought
I experienced was probably amplified and elaborated by my brain. Lets
say one percent of the communication was real and 99% was
brain-generated virtual reality (to be very conservative).
But, this is crucial, just as we
cannot
reduce the
'meaning' of skakespeare by the physical qualities of the ink on paper,
This is a bad example for your position. Meaning is only a relevant
word in the context of a conscious entity. The ink on paper only has
meaning when it is given such by the reader. We have learned a great
deal about how all that works, and have no good reason to think that
any of the stuff we don't know about it yet is not just as naturalistic
as what we already know. When it comes right down to it, there is no
good, logical, persuasive way to assert that anything unknown or
mysterious is unnatural, because of the very lack of explanatory
evidence that makes it a mystery. I have been experiencing and
witnessing real mysterious phenomena for decades and have not seen,
heard, nor read any convincing evidence that anything that exists or
anything that is real is unnatural. Thus one of my objections to the
very prevalent "supernatural" or dualistic connotation of the word
spiritual.
ok again, there is no need to accept the supernatural at all; but here
is a crucual difference, you seem to argue that one day, we'll know
enough of the brain to explain the inner experiences of shakespeare
lovers and tibetan monks, and that is the reductionism I object two.
These are entirely different planes or aspects. No matter how much we
know about how the brain works, that does not say anything about the
hermeneutic aspects of Shakespeare. For that you would need
psychological and social sciences but even more: intersubjective
dialogue, irreducible to any 'science'.
Not yet. That will require full visibility into all
levels of brain
function and a way to "play back" these recorded correlates into
another brain to verify that the experience induced by the recording is
as complete as the original. I predict that some day it will be
demonstrated so. I'd guess that to occur around 2040. I hope I'll live
to experience high-fidelity brain recordings.
again, for me that has no bearing on understanding the phenomena in
question, physical correlates are just physical correlates, they do not
exhaust the issue at all
How can you say that does not exhaust the issue if you record the
correlates and play them back in an actual brain to reproduce the
original experience? I put that in specifically because it would
confirm that the correlates + brain were in fact sufficient to
reproduce the full subjective experience. You can say that's impossible
and will never happen, fair enough, but if it did happen why wouldn't
it exhaust the issue?
Besides, there is all the evidence from brain damage, stimulation, etc.
that the brain creates the subjective experience because when you
damage or stimulate it you alter or extinguish a specific category of
subjective experience or cognition.
I consider this just as well-settled as an election where 40% of the
votes are in and every single one of them is for the same candidate. In
other words, I don't believe in miracles even though there is still a
small possibility they could happen. If and when one happens I'll
reappraise the situation. This is not so much reductionism as a
tendency to conserve ones resources by concentrating on the most
probable pay dirt.
We are all reductionists. That is built in to the nature of our brains
and it offers certain economies and efficiencies. That is why we have
to be so vigilant for habitual cognitive biases and why all our
beliefs, even about our own first-person experiences, have to be
provisional and have to be regularly examined, tested, and revised. The
issue is whether one's reductionism is reasonable in a given context.
For example, if you are even remotely fundamentalist about anything,
including science, that is excessive reductionism. Many religious
people have some of the most reductionist views of reality of all. I
would say that one's world view must be at least 50% based on the best
available science or it is a reductionist world-view. By that standard
probably 90% of the human species has a pathologically reductionist
world-view. Most of the remaining 10% would be some approximation of a
scientist-shaman.
Hence the dialogue is always between
those
three levels,
that of understanding material laws, that of understanding human
meaning, and that of experiencing directly the transformative power of
spiritual experiences.
In that scenario I'm not sure I see any difference between direct
spiritual experience and, say, direct experience with a microscope.
Experience with microscopes is also transformative. Direct experience
is integral to science, and science is transformative, too. So is
torture. (Different strokes....)
well it is the difference between physical torture, mental torture, and
what it all means to the human being doing and experiencing it ...
multiple levels of reality, not reducible to the physical correlates
... each new level of complexity is based on the lower level and cannot
exist without it, but brings new 'laws' to the table .. i.e. emergent
realities
Not reducible to the physical correlates -- I haven't said that. It is
correlates + living brain. But if we can play the brain like a player
piano, it means we don't need anything else (except more detail) to
explain it. That's not irrational reductionism, that is rational
parsimony. An Amazon tribesman might wonder what kind of spirit
animates a chain saw or an excavating machine, but we don't. We
understand the machine performs its function without requiring a
spirit. In my opinion there is no credible evidence that we are
anything but amazingly subtle and complex machines. That is not a
reductionist position unless I hold it in the face of reliable
contradictory evidence.
That doesn't require anyone to
believe
anything said by
such experiencer, but only, if we want, to follow the injunctions that
may lead to those occuring in us as well. There is no obligation, but
in my mind, there should also not be a rejection.
I disagree. Many (perhaps all) altered states of consciousness can be
induced by secular means free of any association with religious or
spiritual trappings. What the religious and spiritual terminologies,
narratives, rituals, sacraments, art, architecture, etc. mostly seem to
contribute is to make a practice or procedure more interesting,
entertaining, or emotionally compelling (sometimes frightening) to
many. This is a way of exploiting human nature.
well again, "a means of exploiting human nature" "hoaxes", instead of :
different cultural and historical ways to experience human and other
realities
That is not a fair characterization of my position. However it would be
foolish not to acknowledge that a great portion of what most people
(including modern, educated westerners) actually believe is
contradicted by fact, and that (a separate issue) there are many people
in all cultures who exploit human nature and perpetrate hoaxes.
... there is a sea of difference between the dead western
funerals I experienced in Belgium (for my father) and the lively,
communal, rich funeral rites I experienced here in Thailand (for my
mother). An incredible difference in effectiveness, psychological,
social, spiritual ..
There are many levels on which traditional funeral rites comfort the
living and assist in their adjustment and I don't quarrel with that at
all (with some possible exceptions) because at that point people are
generally not in a balanced, integral state. By the same token prayer
is known to help many people recover from illness, although there is
also evidence that non-religious guided imagery has a similar impact.
In the absence of other evidence I attribute these to a type of placebo
effect. The downside of the spiritual versions of psychoneuroimmunology
and suggestion is that false belief systems or biases may be reinforced
which could have negative as well as positive consequences at some
point int the future. For example, a person convinced that gods had
healed them my become fundamentalist or apocalyptic. Of course if the
interventions are truly life saving I suppose future consequences can
be damned.
there is really a sea of difference between artificially
creating a altered states through drugs and machinery, and the
collective process that goes on through a spiritual path. Which is not
to say we could not develop and are developing, contempary
methodologies, such as John Heron's Cooperative INquiry and many
others,
http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Spirituality#Key_Articles
I strongly agree that good collective process is often more powerful
than individual practice, though of course they are complementary, and
that altered states achieved without drugs or machinery, if possible,
are preferable--or perhaps I should say they reflect a greater
achievement.
However, altered states acheived au naturale do not escape my scrutiny.
I have had many unassisted "mystical/religious" experiences for which
at the time my highly educated, practiced, and subtle mind had little
recourse but to spiritual interpretations. Drugless, in prayer, I was
once enclosed in two giant, cupped hands that were a translucent,
glowing greenish-blue color. This was visible to my open eyes. I was
certain they were the hands of Jesus. Another time while meditating
(drugless) in a group of experienced meditators in a very special,
highly conducive place, I watched myself as I lay in a small rowboat
floating across a smooth, silvery blue lake towards a far shore that
was not visible at first. As the far shore just became visible, I heard
the unmistakable voice of Jesus --not in my mind but speaking softly in
my ears--giving me a blessing. I realized that the far shore was the
threshold of the heavenly world where my wife (dead for two decades)
might be. As I began to anticipate reaching that shore, I was told in a
different voice, unfamiliar but nonthreatening, that it was not
permitted. My consciousness gradually returned to the room and I felt
better than I ever had in my life. Was this a spiritual experience? In
form and content, perhaps; but in time I came to consider it a
self-induced hallucination. Curiously, the experience was so incredibly
remarkable that I did not feel disappointed to think of it as an
hallucination. I was very impressed with my brain. Despite its past
injuries and some genetic handicaps, it is a very fine brain and I
gotta love it.
Apart from the rejection of the
semantics
of the concept
of spirit and spirituality, it is now a historical time to go beyond
the rejection of 19th century rationalism against anything that is not
purely 'rational', to a time of integration and dialogue between the
various levels of the human being.
That's what I'm all up in here about. My rational arguments would not
be what they are without decades of practical experience and
observation of all things mystical and shamanistic from a highly open
and sympathetic point of view. I do not reject the experience, but I do
reject many of the common interpretations of it.
Understood, so do I, but I believe what is needed is participant
observation, not a superior condemnation from a morally higher vantage
point (i.e. rational thinking vs. hoaxes and human exploitation)
I understand. Despite what I said about loving my brain, I don't think
my interpretations are ecessively ego-based. But I agree that is not
always the case for others who object to spiritual interpretations. In
the past I was often a sympathetic participant-observer of many
cultural traditions and practices. In the present, my aim is not
condemnation but cognitive emancipation and evolution. I only reject
(for myself) beliefs that are contrary to evidence or for which I have
compelling (at least to me) naturalistic hypotheses; and I only discuss
these in what I think are appropriate venues.
PR